The Loins of History

This week we discuss the 2nd Joint Communique between Communist China and the United States in 1979. This communique serves as the foundation of the US “One China Policy” and its position of strategic ambiguity. We discuss how the Carter Administration unilaterally abandoned the US defense treaty with Taiwan, and how that caused Republicans in the Senate to appeal to the Supreme Court in an attemp...

So, what happened after the "March Down the Countryside?" In this episode we discuss the remainder of the Cultural Revolution. Where Lin Biao would rise to become Mao's heir apparent, only to die under questionable circumstances, only to be denounced posthumously by the "Gang of Four".  Deng Xiaoping and Zhou Enlai would manage to return to the CCP only to be targets of Mao and his radical ag...

Why did an ardent anti-communist decide he needed visit a hardline communist country? He felt the US and his administration needed a foreign policy win.  Richard Nixon is famous for a lot of things, but his visit to China is definitely one of his most important, because it altered the trajectory of relations between the US and China for the next 50 years. The story of his visit was not a stra...

The most transformative and significant event in modern Chinese history was the Cultural Revolution. Imagine chaos, betrayal, and epic power struggle on a scale that makes Game of Thrones look like an episode of Barney and Friends.  After Mao lost face from the debacle of the Great Leap Forward, he unleashed the most radical communists in China in order to secure power back from the moderates...

How do you ignite the fire of Revolution? First you must lay the kindling. After the Great Leap Forward the Chinese economy was in shambles, corruption was rampant and dissent was spreading in the ranks, the CCP needed to act in order to re-invigorate the socialist revolution. Liu Shaoqi was the Vice Chairman of the CCP and the heir apparent to Mao, he took to rebuilding the Chinese economy and th...

After the failure of the Great Leap forward, Mao needed to divert attention from his internal failings to external threats. So, what did Mao do? Well, he pretty much ticked every one of his neighbors off and very nearly got into a nuclear war. The 60's were a period of geo-political conflict for the Chinese, they had a border war with India, had relations with Vietnam rapidly deteriorate and...

Did you know that as early as 1950 a rift began to form between the CCP and USSR? And that rift continued to grow while Khrushchev led the USSR, never to be mended.  What did this have to do with Chinese and US relations and how did this set up one of the most devasting famines in human history? In 1956 Khrushchev delivered his "Secret Speech", in it he railed against Stalin and his policies. Mao...

Did you know the Cuban Missile Crisis wasn't the only time the US was on the verge of Nuclear War? In 1954 the US came very close to using tactical nuclear weapons to fight the People's Republic of China.  Shortly after the Korean War ended, the PRC attempted to invade the island of Formosa now known as Taiwan. The remnants of the KMT had fled to Taiwan at the end of the Chinese Civil War, an...

After the US and Allies defeated Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in World War II, only one enemy remained, commies. From 1945 to 1950 the western and communist worlds became increasingly hostile to one another, until Communist North Korea and Kim Il Sung launched a surprise attack on South Korea and drug both the United States and Communist China into war. This week we continue our series on Chine...

After Mao proclaimed the People's Republic of China in 1949 Republicans and Democrats immediately began pointing a finger at one another. The debate that ensued is known as the "Loss of China", with Republicans like Senator Joe McCarthy and later General Douglas MacArthur blaming the Truman Administration for losing China to the Communists, but Democrats like Dean Acheson and Truman blamed it on t...

Japan invaded China in 1937 due to the belief that the benefits of escalation, war, and further expansion in China outweighed the consequences that could be levied by the Chinese and international community. Likewise, Russia escalated its war in Ukraine in 2022 due to its belief that it could weather economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation placed on it by Europe and the US. In both situations,...

Did you know that Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in WWII because of America's China policy?  This week we discuss the beginning of the 2nd Sino-Japanese War and how it relates to the story of US-Chinese relations. Prior to 1937 the Open Door Policy was just a statement of intentions, but President Franklin Delano Roosevelt took it to the next level after Japan attacked China after the Marco Polo...

You may have heard about the Chinese Civil War, but do you know why it happened and its historical context? Continuing our series on US-Chinese relations, this week we tell the story of the Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang and the Communists, but we also discuss how foreign actors, primarily the Soviets and Japanese, tried to influence each side. The Chinese Civil War is to China what the...

“Hi China, America here. I know things haven’t always been easy for us, but remember that time  during WWI, I had your back against Japan when it was going through its angry phase? We really had this beautiful thing going. I thought we could really be something. I love you China. Your current boyfriend is just in it for himself, and he looks like Winnie the Pooh anyway.” If you want to know a...

Why did the US not support democratic leaders in China after the fall of the Qing? When the last Qing Emperor Pu Yi abdicated in 1912, strongman Yuan Shi-Kai became military dictator in Beijing, but after his death in 1916 the country fractured under his successor generals, similar to Alexander the Great. This began the Warlord Era of modern China, and in this episode we talk about how the US larg...

Sun Yat-Sen is claimed by both Taiwan and Communist China as the Father of the Nation and the First Revolutionary. His persistent scheming and leadership played a major role in overthrowing the Qing Dynasty and establishing a parliamentary republic in 1911.  This week we discuss how Sun was influenced by the United States by telling the story of his conversion to Christianity, how he ironical...

What were the final years of the Qing Dynasty like? Why did the Qing Dynasty fail? In this week's episode we dive into the "Mandate of Heaven" and what it meant when that was lost, uprisings and secret societies that plotted the overthrow of the Qing as well as taking a look into Japan at this time and how they handled Western influence on their society. This portion of history is often overlooked...

Wanna know how the last Chinese imperial dynasty fell? Continuing our series on the history of US and Chinese Relations, this week we cover the Boxer Rebellion and how it contributed to the fall of the Qing Dynasty. In the last decade of Qing rule, Western powers plus Japan had carved up China into ‘spheres of influence’, except for the United States. With the growth of foreign influence, the Chin...

China and the US began their official relationship on `bad terms with the "Unequal Treaties", and things only got worse from then on. Many Chinese look back on these decades as the beginning of a spiritual and cultural conflict between the Chinese and Americans, while many Americans simply viewed it as a business transaction.   Once the U.S gained official access to China, missionaries p...

China and the US have a complicated history as it relates to one another, and that relationship has felt significant strain over the past few years with COVID, contentious trade negotiations and now economic concerns. This leaves the question; how did these countries get here? To answer that we will need to go back about 183 years to the Opium Wars and the beginning of the "100 years of Humiliatio...

Let’s be honest, politicians make up economic policy as they go along. And this is especially the case in the United States. With the final episode in our series on Capitalism and Socialism in America, we discuss the economics of the 1990s, through the Great Recession, and end with some observations on the nature of Capitalism and Socialism and which is better for the economy. See, the truth...

After the Second World War, the American dream was alive and well. People had jobs, money and were living in a golden age of the economy, what could go wrong?  Well, a lot actually, increases in government spending, leaving the gold standard and two major energy crises in the 70s led to economic stalemate. This slowdown in growth combined with high interest rates and high inflation led to wha...

You were probably taught in your high school history class that President Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’ is what got us out of the Great Depression. We have some news for you. Not only did the New Deal not get us out of the Great Depression, but it also probably made things worse.  This week on The Loins of History we talk about the impacts of the New Deal and World War II on the American economy, fo...

Economic downturns suck, but they suck even more if economists and policymakers draw the wrong conclusions from them. Continuing our series on a history of capitalism and socialism in America, this week we focus on the Great Depression. We discuss what happened, and compare the two main schools of thought on why it happened. Chances are you were taught that the stock market collapse caused massive...

Before investigative journalism was cool, Ida Tarbell had a score to settle. Standard Oil, arguably the largest monopoly in American history, had shut down many local businesses as it expanded its ever growing corporate web. In 1904 she published The History of the Standard Oil Company, which payed a key role in hastening that company’s demise. This week we continue our series on the history...